The cheating analogy expresses a clear opinion on who’s wrong and who’s right in this mess. It frames Bing as the dumb jock cheating off the smart kid’s test (and anyone who cares about this debate enough to read this far is likely to associate with the smart kid). But it doesn’t capture the full subtlety of what exactly has been going on between Google’s search results and Bing’s.

[But] the results of a search engine aren’t like a midterm. They’re not the sole property of a searcher, or of a search engine. Anyone can Google a query and get the same thing. Unlike an exam, a Google search is available for everyone to cheat off of — including other search engines.

 Consider this analogy: Google and Bing on opposite sides of a classroom, each writing the answers to the same test on opposing chalkboards. While Google is busy tabulating its results in isolation, Bing doesn’t consider its answer complete until it’s turned around to see what Google got.

Bing, like the rest of us, is a Google user. It uses the black box that is Google — the sum total of Google’s carefully-engineered algorithms — to find some output, then uses this output as one of many inputs into some new algorithm. This black box, like Google’s, uses some public tools (unprotected sites, databases and link depositories) to arrive at its product. But Bing uses one public tool that Google doesn’t use: the results of other search engines. Why should that particular public tool be off-limits to people creating search engines?